The invention relates to electric glass-melting furnaces, and more particularly to furnaces of such type in which the heating of the glass melt is effected by means of a plurality of heating electrodes vertically extending from a bottom floor in the melting zone of the furnace.
Prior designs of this general type have exhibited both poor homogeneity of the glass melt which is heated by the furnace, and localized hot spots at the interfaces of the electrodes and the bottom wall of the furnace melting zone. Previous attempts to solve the latter problem have only compounded the former, such solutions generally being in the form of the provision of a system of refractory blocks which are mounted on the bottom surface of the melting zone for supporting the individual electrodes.
In general, the use of such refractory blocks requires the provision of separate and expensive cooling facilities in association therewith, and/or the necessity of providing channels in the bottom surface of the melting zone. The individual channels communicate with a restricted passage provided at the bottom of a cooled partition wall which longitudinally separates the electrode-containing melting zone from the working zone of the furnace.
Beside the expense and complication of such arrangement, the resulting unevenness of the bottom surface of the working zone severely impedes the flow of melt through the melting zone and through the restricted passage of the partition to the working zone.